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Ahead of
November 9, when an independence referendum, disguised as an opinion poll and
yet again as a “participatory process”, stubbornly objected to as
unconstitutional by the Spanish government, is supposed to take place in
Catalonia, it is highly uncertain how events are finally going to unfold. Most
probably, people will be able to cast an opinion in a carton box in a protest performance held by partisan volunteers in the
name of the fundamental right of freedom of expression. It is only a previous
step, the Catalan president stated, on the way to future “plebiscitary” elections
that will become the “real” vote on independence. In a mature democratic
society, where political negotiation, predictability and the rule of law is the
glue of social trust, this is an extraordinary situation. How did we come that
far?

Referendums, as the Spanish saying
goes, “are loaded by the devil”. But in case of referendums on independence,
that load might prove too heavy. The recent referendum in Scotland –an exercise
of open and vibrant debate– has proved to be, at the end, awfully disruptive:
asking people to decide on the irreversible future of their nation is as
heartening as it is frightful. There is a fundamental flaw in this kind of ballots
on one question as, if you get a Yes vote, the decision is irreversible, the
game is over and no more referendums are to be called but, if you get a No
vote, you might still call for as many referendums as you wish down the line until
you get the Yes vote you pursue. Blistering emotions are more powerful than
cold blood and, whatever the outcome, a polarized society is left behind with
wounds and sorrows that only time can heal. How is it, then, that wealthy,
civilized, post-industrial European nations can end up in such a zero-sum game?

One Constitution and several nation buildings

Two of the fathers of the 1978
Constitution were Catalans, and they made sure the fundamental law included the
recognition of the three historical nations embedded in Spain: Catalonia, the
Basque Country and Galicia. These three nations had managed to negotiate a
certain degree of devolution during the Second Republic (1931-1936), and had
approved “Statutes of Autonomy”. Yet, having existed as a single state for
about 500 years, and coming out of a dreadful civil war and long fascist dictatorship
where national unity was considered sacred, the politicians drafting the Constitution
could only endorse the fact that Spain was a single nation, its sovereignty lying
on a single, indivisible demos. That Spanish nation, though – in coherence with
an ancient tradition of regional/national self-government institutions – came
to be defined as constituted by different “nationalities” and regions. The key
word here was “nationalities”, a euphemism for “nations” only agreed to
overcome the more accurate, but highly sensitive, concept of “nation”.
Alternatively, Spain could have been defined as a “nation of nations” or even as
a “plurinational state”, but in 1978,
in a fragile transition process from a uniformitarian autocracy to democracy,
those definitions could not bring enough consensus to the negotiation table.
Therefore, the Constitution established a quasi-federal system that would bring
together the different constituencies under the common denomination of
Autonomous Communities. This was not fully satisfactory for the Catalan and
Basque nationalists, but they accepted the deal: they saw in the new
architecture an opportunity to recover long lost self-governing institutions
from where to rebuild their repressed nations. Besides, in a smart move, the
Basque Country and Navarre managed to re-establish a very favourable deal by
restoring their fiscal and financial exemptions (fueros) –which had survived from medieval times– introducing an
asymmetry that would prove unsettling for the whole system in the long run.

From 1980 onwards, Basque and Catalan
nationalist conservative parties managed to comfortably win one regional
election after the other, devoting themselves effectively to accomplish their
core political project: nation building. Being essentially conservative/liberal
parties, they played a moderate and centrist role at the national political
arena. Whenever one of the two main national parties did not manage to win an
absolute majority in the Spanish congress, nationalists were ready to provide
stability and prove their commitment to the governability of the state, always
in exchange of tangible benefits to bring back to their home constituencies.

At that stage, nation building
included national education and linguistic policies, for which a national radio
and television were fundamental instruments. They set up a national history
museum, a national theatre, a national art museum. They exercised the right to
restore their own historical police forces, to honour their national heroes, to
rebuild their national myths. A robust identity, a prosperous language and a
vibrant culture were a genuine, fertile ground from where the nation could
happily blossom at will. Decentralization was working, other autonomous
communities were doing well, and the “state of the autonomies” was considered
to be a success story across Europe. So far, so good.

State building and a clash with the Constitution

By the late 90s, once the
fundamentals of the nation were properly put together, the ruling elites
started to experience an increasing power anxiety for not being able to
complete their national project. Catalonia lacked the full financial capacity
the Basques already enjoyed and only knew that ruling a fully fledged nation
turned out to be a clearly under-funded business. And yet, to become an entirely
operative nation it is inevitable to fund a proto-state, as a necessary
previous step for becoming a fully independent state down the line. As soon as
that goal became vocal, a red line was drawn by a central state that started to
fight back for survival. It suddenly realized that it might have gone too far
in its “devo-max” policies, and that the risk of disintegration was real. The
state, thus, froze any further devolution and, at some point, started to
recentralize.

Nationalists always develop a natural
sense of property over the nation they have successfully built. A sense that
was particularly strong in Catalonia as its charismatic leader, Mr. Jordi Pujol,
a former banker whose cultural nationalism was inspired by nineteenth century philosophers like Herder and Renan, managed to win 6 regional elections
in a row (1980-2003). Those 23 years of same-man rule inevitably created what
can be described as a regime, providing leadership, stability and growth but
lacking the transparency, accountability, renovation and fresh air a democracy
requires if it is to healthily thrive. Rising as the unchallenged father of the
modern Catalan nation, he nominated his successor to be his youngest protégé,
Mr. Artur Mas, a fairly disciplined, educated, albeit angulated professional
politician, who had been his minister of economy (1997-2001) before becoming
his deputy prime minister (2001-2003). Mr. Mas was supposed to perform as a
buffer before Mr. Pujol’s son, Oriol, a rising star in the ruling party
currently retired from the political front-line after being accused of
corruption, was ready to complete the dynastic succession. The operation was meticulously
planned and yet, Mr. Mas performed badly at the polling stations in 2003.
Despite his victory in number of seats (46 nationalist seats to 42 socialist
seats in a parliament of 135) he did not win in number of votes and unexpectedly
lost the government to a centre-left coalition. Devastated, conservative nationalists
felt literally robbed by what they dubbed “a coalition of losers”. “It feels
like if burglars had broken into the house”, declared the former first lady,
Mrs. Marta Ferrusola, very tellingly.

Yet the 23 years old conservative
nationalist political hegemony had managed to turn into ideological hegemony.
The opposition was persuaded that the only way of winning the Catalan elections
was to fight the battle in the nationalist field and dispute the exclusivity of
nationalism to the conservative liberals. Thus, new centre-left coalition
government was only possible thanks to a pro-independence party who came third,
with 21 seats. The coalition government agreement (Pacte del Tinell) considered to be central to the agenda the
negotiation of a new Statute of Autonomy. Although the original idea of the
newly elected president, a former charismatic albeit eccentric major of
Barcelona, Mr. Pasqual Maragall, was to strike a final federal deal with the
Spanish government that will draw to a close the tireless exercise of endless
bargaining for ever more devolution and money, such a deal proved to be
chimerical. Asymmetric federalism was the name of the creature, but nationalists
on both sides did not want to see any federal-like solution for Spain at all.

Obviously, a new Statute was a main
concern only to politicians in parliament, and not to people in the street (in
2004, a tiny 3.8% of the Catalans considered the reform of the Statute to be a
priority). The conservative nationalists, now uncomfortably sitting in the
opposition benches, would by no means allow the centre-left coalition to lead
such a negotiation. They would invest all their political capital to appear as
the true leaders of the process, even if that meant to drag the Statute reform
into a direction that was fated to clash with the Spanish Constitution.

Yet, in September 2005 the Consell Consultiu –a Catalan government
institution that ensured the compliance of legal regulations with the Statute
and the Constitution– considered 10% of the articles of the new Statute to be
unconstitutional (Opinion 269). Ignoring the Consell’s judgement, the government and the parliament decided to
go ahead. President Maragall, in a lucid premonition, declared: “We are going
to put together a Statute of maximums, and the drama will be set”. He did not
have the power to contain hegemonic nationalism and, trapped in the political
battlefield, started to become a nationalist himself. Most probably, his
presidential term was already doomed to fail because of the many contradictions
within the coalition and his own party, but the original mistake of devoting
all his energy to a new, improbable Statute, proved to be fatal.

More than two years were consumed in
a rollercoaster-type endless negotiation, which included a final backstabbing
by the opposition leader –Mr. Mas himself– who met prime minister Zapatero
behind doors to agree the Statute’s final draft. The text went through some further
undercutting amendments in the Spanish Congress, and ended up in a referendum
where, with an unprecedentedly below 50% turnout, only 35%
of the Catalan total electorate voted in favour. That was a poor performance
for a titanic effort that left everybody exhausted and only one winner: a clash
of nationalisms, a constitutional conflict.

A cycle of protests

The new Statute was contested from
the very beginning by the Spanish opposition conservative party that considered
it to be unconstitutional. Albeit in the text it was relegated to the preamble,
and thus it was not going to have any legal effects, defining Catalonia as a
nation was considered a thorny point. Like it or not, the 1978 Constitution,
according to its Preliminary title (article 2), was “based on the indissoluble unity of
the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards”. For
constitutionalists, recognising a Catalan nation as such would certainly mean
to recognise Catalonia as a political subject, and thus to form a separate
demos, consequently fragmenting the existing Spanish demos and opening the door
to potential disintegration. It is clearly a political problem, not a mere legal
one, but the indissolubility principle –particularly cherished by the army–
remained a red line that could only be crossed through a - again improbable -
constitutional reform.

After a contemptuously long deliberation, that took almost 4 years, the
Spanish Constitutional Court, responding to an objection from the opposition
Popular Party –which had been militantly opposing the Statute from its very
inception (including infamously stirring Spanish nationalism by raising 400,000
firms against it on the streets across the country) –, finally ruled out, by a
short majority vote of six to four, 14 of the 223 articles long Statute, and
interpreted 27 more, mainly regarding financial and legal competencies. That
late decision was obviously a significant political error. In an unprecedented
move, the Catalan press published a joint editorial under the title: “Dignity!”
The Catalan president, backed by a myriad of civil society organisations,
called for a large protest rally under the banner “We are a nation. We decide”.
A Statute, by no means a peoples’ priority in 2004, was already mobilising
hundreds of thousands in 2010.

A blurred political concept was then set in motion: the “right to
decide”. During that demonstration, spontaneous chants of “i–inde-indepen-ci-á”
–up to then an exclusive jingle of the pro-independence party– turned out to
become main-stream, and ignited an impressive 4-year cycle of massive rallies in
the streets of Catalonia. How was it that such a drastic option had become main-stream?

On the way to confrontation

Catalan nationalists concluded that the Constitutional Court decision had
finished off the 1978 constitutional pact. The transition, they said, was over.
Consequently, they felt legitimized to openly contest the Spanish Constitution.
After their two-terms long wander in the wilderness, conservative nationalists
regained power in the 2010 elections, winning a comfortable majority of 62
seats. It was their best score since 1992. The subsequent nationalist and
pro-independence parties’ victory in the local elections in 2011 took over most
of the town councils across the country including, for the first time since
democracy restoration, that of the up to then leftist and cosmopolitan capital
city of Barcelona.

Reality, nevertheless, is a stubborn creature. The harsh international
financial crisis was hitting hard and, after the crumbling of the socialist
party, in November 2011 the conservatives won the Spanish general elections
with a landslide absolute majority (185 seats out of 350). By then, the cash
flow from the central government to the autonomous communities was drying-out:
the strict deficit control policies instructed by the Troika being compulsory
and unavoidable. With a huge inherited public deficit and a costly
administration to run (as it includes public health and education), the
financial situation of the Catalan government, despite Mr. Mas efficiently championing the politics of austerity, became desperate. In protest for an
aggressive dismantling of the welfare state and a skyrocketing unemployment,
people were massively taking to the streets with anger. Fuelled by the May 2011
protests, when thousands of indignados had
occupied the squares of many towns across the country, the central square in Barcelona
was blooming. When the autonomous police used force to clear the square from protesters
reluctant to decamp, the Catalan government popularity reached historical lows.

For the first time since post-war times, the Spanish middle classes were
dramatically losing both access to public services and purchasing power. With
the domestic situation becoming explosive, channelling the anger against the
central government and blaming Madrid for the situation was politically
advantageous. For nationalism, the construction of the enemy is always very instrumental. Right in the middle of the worst financial and economic crisis
ever, taking to Madrid to get the same financial deal enjoyed by the Basque
country was a tricky move. In private, everybody agreed it was asking for the
impossible, but that it would make a good sell back home.

And then, events unfolded. On September’s 2012 national Catalan day, a
huge rally in the streets of Barcelona was almost unanimous in chanting in
favour of independence. The giant demonstration was called by an impressively
well-organised new civil society entity (the Catalan National Assembly, active
since 2010), sided by a traditional nationalist cultural association, Omnium
Cultural, and backed by the Catalan government and its broadcasting media. They
had devoted themselves to polishing up the national magic lamp for a long time
and now the genius of independence was unexpectedly out. Instead of trying to
contain him, that same evening, Mr. Mas welcomed the leaders of the protest in
the governmental palace and solemnly declared: “I have heard the voice of the
people”. Letting the people on the street set the political agenda might turn
to be his biggest mistake, as a perilous wind of populism started to blow.

A week and a half later, on September 20, president
Mas was in Madrid asking for the unfeasible fiscal pact, aspiring to emulate
the Basque’s fiscal exemption. A stubborn Spanish prime minister did not
understand what was really going on, and Mr. Mas came back with a victory in the form of a blunt “no”. He was welcomed with general applause for his defiance and
cheered by partisan crowds in front of the governmental palace. Five days later,
he was calling for early elections. “The time has come for Catalans to exercise
their right to self-determination” –he stated. “How could you not call for
early elections after the million-man march we saw on National Day?”

2014: decisive elements aligned

In the late 2012’s electoral campaign Mr. Mas asked for a reinforced –if
not an absolute– majority, to enable him to carry forward an ill-defined “right
to decide” with, he said, full guarantees. But more people than expected were
suspicious of that move and yet again, like in 2003, elections did not turn out
the way the ruling party had planned. Instead of a reinforced majority,
nationalist conservatives were down from 62 to 50 seats, losing 12 MPs along
the way. With only 30.71 % of the vote, this was their worst share ever since
the first post-Franco regional election, back in 1980. They were now at the
mercy of the pro-independence party, which collected 11 of the 12 MP’s lost by
Mr. Mas and was up from 10 to 21 seats. They now awkwardly agreed to back a
weakened centre-right majority, troubled by increasingly conspicuous corruption
cases, but only under one condition: the new government should call for an
independence referendum in year 2014. All in all, nationalists retained their
hegemony, but the accent on independence was overwhelming.

The pro-independence party leaders perfectly understood that this was a historical
opportunity to push their agenda. However, they did not join the government in
a coalition, as they thought they would better serve their cause from the
opposition benches. They signed an agreement with the government and, as a
result, they became both the leading opposition party and the main government
ally. Bizarre, maybe, but no contradiction: the moment had come to accomplish
the dream of independence. Four decisive favourable elements were to be perfectly
aligned in 2014:

a) An absolute majority of the right-wing Popular Party in Madrid, the
eternal enemy of Catalonian secessionists, incapable of conceding a single
millimetre;

b) An economic crisis in full swing, with a bankrupted Catalan
government having extreme financial difficulties, an unprecedented 20% +
unemployment rate, and a large number of angry people ready to rally in
protest, seeking for a light at the end of the tunnel;

c) A fully fledged governmental campaign to commemorate the 300
anniversary of the end of the Spanish crown succession war in 1714, when
Catalan centuries-old self-governing institutions were abolished, was an ideal occasion to convey the historical grievance to the general public;

d) An independence referendum to take place in Scotland on 18 September.
Should the Yes vote win, it would only pave the way for Catalan independence.

However, these factors –an absolute majority of an embattled
conservative party bluntly opposing any further transfer of money or power; a
population devastated by a seemingly endless economic crisis, frustrated by
classic politics, genuinely mobilised and ready to fight for a hope; a muscular
“end 300 years of colonisation” campaign; and a vote on independence in
Scotland–, are all ephemeral. In year 2015 –with local and regional elections upcoming
in May and general elections in November– the Spanish conservative absolute
majorities most probably will vanish; a weak but steady economic recovery and
the rise of a new radical party (Podemos) might start creating other hopes than
independence; the 1714 commemorations’ propaganda will fade away, and the
Scottish referendum will be long gone.

A full house bet

A pro-independence gale has been blowing throughout Catalonia, with
particular intensity over the last 2 years. It has been embraced by a number of
actors, from the nationalist conservative right to the greens and the far-left,
from the majority of civil society organisations to most of the Catalan media,
and the government has been throwing institutional weigh. It has build up a
formidable wave. At its peak in 2014, a snap shot of it (a referendum) could
change history forever.

The conflict’s most reasonable conclusion, which means opening a
negotiation to reform the 1978 Constitution, laying the conditions to build a
federal state, nations included, will soon become possible. Reluctantly but pragmatically, Spain (and
Europe alike) would be treading the federal path –not through emotion, not
through conviction, but out of sheer necessity. And that’s a scenario (a federal,
republican Kingdom of Spain, a United States of Europe) nationalists on every
side do not want to see. Having smartly created momentum for their cause, and
knowing that this is the most probable outcome of the current stalemate, they
are in a hurry. “Now is the time”, goes the pro-independence campaign. “We will
never-ever allow secession”, goes the obstinate central government, paralysed
by the fear of any concession that could be perceived as a failure to defend
the sacred unity of the Spanish nation.

Catalan nationalism has come a long way. It has managed to put together
a fairly vibrant nation, enjoying a level of political autonomous power
unmatched in Europe’s modern history but, alas, has felt short of money. It has
built an overwhelming political and ideological hegemony throughout an effervescent
Catalan society, highly mobilised in giant and regimented protests, making news
around the world. Yet, it has to go the extra mile. Trapped in a capability/expectations
gap, embattled by corruption cases –not least by Mr. Pujol’s confession of a decades-long
fiscal fraud– it has now to face, with a mixture of survival determination and
political vertigo, its own destiny: it either culminates the nation building
process by declaring unilaterally an independent nation-state, assuming the
costs of a bitter conflict with Spain and probably Europe, or faces the
frustration of its plentiful militant followers, who have faithfully and
festively been pushing for the pro-independence referendum to happen, only to
see a pantomime of it. A lot of them are flocking to the pro-independence party
anyway.

To my view, on the long term, the accumulation of political errors can
be fatal to a nation’s destiny. Maybe it was an original error agreeing on a
semi-federal Constitution in 1978, allowing open-ended internal nation-building
processes to thrive without putting in place appropriate mechanisms to finance
and appease them at the same time. It was an error to pass an over-ambitious
yet controversial Catalan Statute in 2006, seeking to constitute a separate
demos for Catalonia. It was an error to build a partisan campaign against it,
and present a full objection to the Constitutional Court. It was an error to
rule out, 4 years later, 14 of its articles. It was an error to
over-react by setting in motion mass protests in the name of a newly born
“right to decide”, imagined as a proxy concept of a right to self-determination
that would hardly apply to Catalonia under current international law. It was a
crucial error from the Spanish prime minister not to concede a negotiation on a
new financial status for Catalonia to appease the beast. It was yet another crucial error to call
for early elections as a reaction to a rally on the street in 2012, no matter
the astonishing number of protestors joining the march. It was an error to
promise a referendum on independence for 2014, disguise it as an opinion poll,
and call for it unilaterally, knowing for sure that a Spanish government with
an absolute majority was going to firmly oppose it from day one.

It is an error to try to go ahead by all means, engaging thousands of pro-independence partisan
volunteers to ensure people can cast their “opinion” in carton boxes on November 9, mocking a referendum lacking democratic guarantees by any
standard, only to buy time. It is an error to call this a previous step for the
“real” referendum to be carried out in the form of future “plebiscitary” elections
that, should pro-independence partisans win a probable absolute majority in
parliament, would eventually end up in a unilateral declaration of independence.

From a politics of majoritarianism perspective, it would mean nothing
but patriotically complying with the democratic will of the Catalan people, and Madison’s
warning against the tyranny of the majority would sound backward and obsolete.
As certain polls on independence show a 50/50 split at best, this is an indecisive and highly divisive scenario. The truth is that political fragmentation seems to be the name of the game for
the upcoming electoral cycle, adding soaring uncertainty to the current
disarray.

But I might be mistaken, and, for hegemonic nationalists ruling the
current regime, what I call consecutive errors might only be unavoidable bumps
on the road to "freedom" for the Catalan nation. To my view, however, so many
hazards in such a hurry raise the suspicion that something is going
fundamentally wrong, as I find the populist flaws and manipulative aspects of the process to be
self-evident. In any case, by embracing a unilateral independence agenda at the
eleventh hour, the heirs of Mr. Pujol’s political project of the 80’s and 90’s
might lose their grip on power. Or they might not. It is, after all, a full
house bet. And the dice of nationalism are loaded.

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